


kindly

by apolliades



Category: BioShock
Genre: AU, Alcohol, Atlas is Not Frank Fontaine, Atlas is Real, Death, Dubious Consent, Forced Relationship, M/M, Manipulation, Not Canon Compliant, One-Sided Relationship, Temporary Character Death, Would You Kindly (Bioshock)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-12
Updated: 2015-11-12
Packaged: 2018-05-01 08:10:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5198558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apolliades/pseuds/apolliades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"Would you kindly love me back?"</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	kindly

**Author's Note:**

> okay so this is kind of horrible. trigger warnings for manipulation, awful use of would you kindly, violence, blood. it wasn't meant to be this dark! but it is. i'm sorry.
> 
> i was inspired to write a bioshock thing by a really lovely fic called "when in rome" by whreflections. i really adore their au, and the relationship between jack & atlas. it is a lot nicer. their atlas is a sweetheart. if you want nice atlas and sweet boyfriends, please read their fic instead. in this one, atlas is a cruel bastard.

_"Would you kindly love me back?"_

It's not a question. He murmurs it soft and quiet against the curve of Jack’s ear one night when he's fast asleep. Asleep like the dead. If would be easy to take him for being dead, if you didn’t know better. His chest moves so barely. His breath comes so soft. But Atlas knows better. Atlas knows. Always knows.

It’s the worst thing he’s ever done. Out of everything.  Out of all of it. He’s certain. All the killing, thieving, deceit—out of all of it, this is the worst. Because Jack _doesn’t_ —but he will—

He will, and he won’t know any different, so it’s not that bad, is it? It’s not that bad. It’s not like he’ll know any different. It’s not that bad.

_Not that bad, but still the worst._

Atlas knows the second Jack wakes up that it’s worked. It’s right there in the way he looks at him. Completely differently, like he’s seeing him for the first time. Like he’s never seen something so beautiful.

Like he’s in love.

It makes Atlas’ chest go tight. He’s pleased, but it’s bittersweet.

He’s surprised that it worked, for some reason, although he really shouldn’t be. He has no reason to be. Of course it worked. It always works. Jack is his dog. Jack is his slave. Jack is _his._ And Jack does what he says, without fail, as long as he asks nicely.

“Morning, boyo,” Atlas greets him as he wakes, although there’s no real way of knowing if it’s morning or not anymore, down here. Everything is the same shade of murky yellow-blue. Everything is dull.

Except for the way Jack smiles at him, groggy and blurry. That’s bright. It cuts through everything else. Atlas wants to keep Jack’s smile more than anything else. Wishes he could bottle it.

He puts his thumb on Jack’s mouth, right in the middle where his lips are fullest. Jack looks at him with wonder. Jack looks at him with the eyes of a new born child. Atlas looks at him with hunger.

For a while he doesn’t say anything, because he wants to watch Jack fall in love with him and pretend it’s real. He wants to watch Jack squirm and frown and try to work out what’s happening and why his artificial heart is pounding so fast and why he wants to press himself close up to Atlas and put his hands on him. Atlas watches and he likes it.

-

It’s been a relatively bad day. Jack’s bleeding out for the second time, and it’s only… well. It’s early, probably. They’re a way away from the closest Vita-Chamber and Atlas can tell Jack’s in pain because his skin is damp with sweat as well as blood and his face is white and his knuckles are whiter where they’re clutching tight at Atlas’ jacket. It’s a shame about the jacket. It had almost been clean when he found it.

“Atlas,”

Jack’s practically whimpering. He’s a grown man. It’s pathetic. But Atlas loves him, doesn’t he? Though he couldn’t tell you why if you paid him. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t be carrying him through this godforsaken city. If he didn’t, he would’ve left him to rot a long time ago.

“Yer a fuckin’ liability, y’know that,” he grumbles, lowering Jack to the ground. It’s a secure-ish corner. It’s a toilet cubicle, actually. But the door locks. And the toilet seems to have been removed, making it almost spacious.

Jack says nothing. He’s busy staring at his bloody hands and trembling. Atlas wonders what a stomach full of shotgun shell feels like. It looks like hell.

Somewhere in the distance there’s an electric crackle. Music plays. It’s muffled and watery.

_“Somewhere… beyond the sea… somewhere, waiting for me…”_

Atlas kneels in front of him and pulls open Jack’s ruined shirt. His stomach is a terrible mess. Atlas puts his thumb to one of the bullet holes and thinks he feels bone.

“Don’t think yer gonna survive it this time, love.”

Jack looks at him with hazy eyes. Atlas wonders how many times Jack must’ve died. He wonders what dying must be like, for Jack to still look so scared before he goes.

He presses his palm against Jack’s stomach. Blood oozes through his fingers. Jack moans.

“Hurtin’, love?”

The record skips. The needle scrapes the vinyl. Jack’s nails scrape Atlas’ wrists.

“Mm.”

_“I may not always love you… but as long as there are stars above you…”_

The sound of Jack’s breathing is ragged and wet. Atlas can hear the blood in his throat. It bubbles as he watches, and bursts on his lips, and runs down his chin. Jack’s eyes flutter.

Atlas touches his neck and finds his pulse. It’s still there, still trying. It’s so determined, Jack’s little heart.

“Alright, darlin’. Alright.”

Atlas isn’t looking forward to dragging Jack’s body all the way to the nearest Vita-Chamber, but he’ll do it. He’ll do it without even stopping to ask himself why.

_"You always hurt the one you love…"_

Atlas wishes the record would stop skipping. It’s distracting, every time the song changes.

The needle sticks.

_“You always hurt—you always hurt—you always hurt—”_

Atlas grits his teeth.

“Lie still, Jack. Lie _still,_ would you kindly.”

He feels Jack go limp as a kitten under his hands and watches his face change at those words. Whenever Atlas says them Jack gets this look, one that makes Atlas’ stomach hurt. He looks betrayed. It makes him want to smack the expression off Jack’s face. His eyes are full of questions and hurt. Atlas won’t look at his eyes and pushes Jack’s face to the side.

He wishes Jack had never found out what they meant. Life would be so much easier.

If he could make it quicker he would. But he’s almost out of bullets for his handgun and it’s so loud, besides. There’s gotta be splicers nearby. It’s gotta be one of them that set the jukebox running.

Jack’s blood is humming with Adam.

Atlas isn’t going to chance it.

Jack is slumped against the wall. His skin matches the colour of the tile.

_“You always hurt – always hurt – always hurt—”_

Atlas fantasises about putting his fist through the glass of a jukebox screen.

He unfastens the Bowie knife from his belt and presses his thumb to the edge of the blade. It stings.

Jack is fast losing consciousness, but he only has a stomach wound. It’ll take him a while yet to bleed out, if Atlas doesn’t do something about it. Jack very rarely seemed to take hits that were immediately fatal. He’d take wounds that bled profusely and were hard to fix but almost always meant he’d be suffering for hours before the light finally left his eyes. It was almost never quick. Why was it never in the head?

Atlas sits across Jack’s lap and rests his palm on the nape of his neck. Jack’s head is heavy in his hand. He can hear the breath stutter and wheeze in his throat. He can hear the soft bubble of blood in his windpipe. He’d probably asphyxiate sooner than he’d exsanguinate.

Never mind. He’s suffered long enough already. Atlas watches him die so often he sometimes forgets he suffers. He sometimes gets lost in the watching.

That’s not fair to Jack, though, not really, so Atlas cuts his throat open. The skin parts easier than butter.  He makes sure to catch the carotid, the jugular, the thick arteries and veins that will make it quicker. He’s done this so many times it isn’t hard to find them. The cut he makes is clean.

He kisses the side of Jack’s face and holds him and lets him bleed into his shirt. It only takes a minute. He listens to the sick wet gurgle of blood and air leaving Jack’s throat. Underneath him he feels Jack move, just a little, instinct telling him to struggle. He doesn’t have the energy to do much, though. And Atlas _had_ asked him to lie still.

“Good boy,” Atlas tells him, mouth against his ear, “good boy, Jack. It’s alright. It’s alright. Not long now.”

Jack’s blood is spilling warm and thick between them. They’re soaked. They’ll both need new sets of clothes, but they’re unlikely to get them. His skin is starting to feel cold.

It only takes a minute. Atlas presses his fingers to Jack’s wrist and can’t find a hint of anything beating under the fine pale skin. He sits back and studies Jack’s face. He is utterly bloodless.

His eyes are empty and still half open and his lips are turning blue. Atlas cups his face and kisses his dead mouth.

He won’t kiss Jack while he’s alive, though. He’s waiting for Jack to kiss him first. That way, he thinks, that way it’ll feel real. If he lets Jack make the first move, then maybe, maybe it won’t feel like Atlas ever made him do it. Maybe it’ll feel like love as love used to be. He doubts it. But maybe.

_“You always break the kindest heart, with a hasty word you can’t recall.”_

The music crackles as the record starts to turn smoothly again.

_“So if I broke your heart last night, it’s because I love you most of all.”_

Atlas puts his boot through the jukebox’s speaker on his way past.

-

Jack stumbles out of the Vita-Chamber a little dazed and completely whole again, bright eyed and blinking. He looks so healthy, it’s strange. His skin almost looks as though it’s seen the sun. It hasn’t. Neither of them has seen the sun in years. Jack collapses onto his arse next to Atlas.

“Feelin’ better, love?” Atlas takes the last half of his cigarette out from his lips and puts it between Jack’s instead. Jack lets him, and inhales gratefully. Atlas wonders if Jack can taste his spit on the filter.

Jack nods, and puts his fingers through his hair. It always takes him a while to say anything after he comes back. Atlas wonders what it’s like. He wonders if it feels like being born. He never asks, though.

He’s been doing a lot of wondering, lately. Too much to be good for him. Does Jack ever think about anything, about the things he thinks about?

Atlas wills his brain to shut the hell up. He lights another cigarette. It’s the second to last in the pack.

“Hungry?”

Jack shrugs. They fall quiet. Jack tosses his cigarette butt and leans onto Atlas’ shoulder. Atlas feels his pulse quicken. _Yes,_ he thinks, feeling the heavy press of Jack’s arm along his, the nudge of their thighs touching. _Good boy._

-

They get drunk later, without really meaning to. It’s not exactly clever, down here, to be drunk and out of control when there are splicers round every corner and Big Daddies round every other. But Jack finds a case of very old, very expensive Irish malt in the pantry of some posh old house while they’re searching it for food, and when it touches Atlas’ lips it almost makes him moan. It tastes like home.

“You’ve gotta taste this, Jack,” he says, and passes Jack the bottle, and watches as his lips meet the glass where his own had been moments ago. He almost says something about every man tasting good Irish malt before he dies, and then remembers who he’s talking to, and keeps his mouth shut.

It’s too good a whisky to drink for the sake of getting drunk, but now that he’s started Atlas finds he is unable to stop. They find enough food for a day or two and clean clothes, too, since they’d been wandering around wearing Jack’s blood for hours now. Then they barricade themselves in one of the smaller rooms of the big old house, one that has two doors and a window that’s already been boarded up, and a sink; Atlas’ three prerequisites for an ideal safehouse.

They sit with their backs to the wall, side by side and not quite touching, and pass the bottle back and forth until it’s half gone. Atlas always used to have a head for liquor, but it’s been a while. He can feel the warmth of it heavy in his stomach and fiery in his blood.

It’s hard to tell if Jack’s drunk, because he’s so still and so quiet, all the fucking time. His silence is frustrating, bordering on infuriating. To be fair, though, Atlas can’t think of much to say either. And there _isn’t_ much to talk about, really, not down here. There isn’t much to think about. All you think about is making it through the day. After that, you think about making it through the night. Repeat ad nauseam.

Atlas presses his knuckles into his temples.

“You wanna sleep first?” he asks, for the sake of something to say. Even in a safehouse this secure, the two of them sleeping at the same time would be like asking to be killed. The words come out a little more slurred than he’d been expecting.

Jack shakes his head. He hands the bottle back to Atlas. “M’alright.”

 “Well, I ain’t gonna argue with you, boyo,” Atlas drinks. “Dare say you’ve got a damn sight more energy than I have, what with bein’ born again, and all that. New lease of life.”

He’s talking utter bullshit, and he’s not really sure why. Because he doesn’t like the silence, he supposes. Jack looks vaguely uncomfortable.

“Would you kindly stop looking at me like that?”

Jack turns his face away before Atlas has finished his sentence, expression gone blank.

Atlas doesn’t even realise he’d said it until it’s too late. He mutters an apology and drinks again.

-

They sit up long enough to finish the rest of the bottle. It’s a waste but Atlas can’t bring himself to care and Jack probably doesn’t know any better.

Jack barely says a word, and it grates on Atlas badly. He tries to fill the quiet with half-arsed stories about his life before, up above, because he remembers Jack once saying he liked to hear them. But Jack doesn’t give him much of a response, and thinking about what it feels like to breathe fresh air above water is making him feel unpleasantly cold.

“I’ll take you to Ireland, one day, Jack,” Atlas murmurs. _If she’s still there when you get out of here,_ his brain adds, unbidden, _if you ever do._

Jack mumbles something vague in agreement. Atlas turns his head to look at him.

“What are you thinking about in that head of yours, boyo?” He touches his fingers to Jack’s temple. It startles him. Atlas lets his hand fall again.

Jack shrugs.  Something cold and nasty twists inside of Atlas, and makes him do it. It’s easier, to live with himself, if he pretends like some outside force makes him do it. If he pretends it’s Jack’s fault for being so fucking silent.

“Tell me, Jack—” he says, and Jack looks at him with face that says _please, don’t_ , and then he says out loud,

“Atlas, don’t,” but Atlas does.

“—would you kindly?”

“Thinking about you, Atlas,” Jack says, in a voice hardly above a whisper, like he doesn’t want to say it.

Jack makes his hand into a fist and lays it on his chest, right at his sternum, where his heart is. “The past few days… I keep getting this feeling. I don’t know what it is.”

Atlas wishes they were somewhere else, under different circumstances, somewhere safe and warm where they’re just men and nothing worse, so he could put his hand over Jack’s and say _that’s love, darlin’, that’s love, and I feel it too_ , but he doesn’t.

Instead he puts his hand on Jack’s jaw and tilts his head up to look at him. He pushes his fingers into the dark soft hair behind Jack’s ear. He moves just close enough so that Jack will have to close the gap.

Jack kisses him like he’s never kissed anyone ever before. His mouth is hesitant and oddly soft on Atlas’ chapped split lips. He tastes like whisky and he tastes brand new.  Atlas shifts into his lap and twists his fingers into his hair and kisses him til he’s breathless and panting into his mouth. He kisses him til he almost sobs.

-

“What did you do to me, Atlas?” Jack asks afterwards. He looks lost. “What did you do to make me like this?”

They’re lying facing one another on a worn out rug in the middle of the floor. Their faces are close, noses almost touching, and Atlas’ hand is heavy on Jack’s side. The rise and fall of his ribs as he breathes is comforting, somehow.

 “Be quiet and go to sleep, Jack,” Atlas says back, with his eyes closed. He’s still drunk. They both are. “You sound like a baby.”

Jack goes silent, so Atlas opens one eye to look at him. Jack’s staring at him. “I said go to _sleep,_ ” he reiterates, and Jack nearly winces, anticipating three more words that don’t come.

Atlas closes his eyes again, and tips his face forward so he can feel Jack’s breath on his lips. He’s fucking exhausted, and he’d be asleep by now if it weren’t for Jack being a sooky bastard. He presses Jack’s side and feels him shift closer.

“And kiss me goodnight,” he murmurs, drifting towards oblivion, “would you kindly.”

Jack looks at him like he hates him, and kisses the corner of his mouth. 


End file.
